Older, white males with advanced bladder cancer at high risk for suicide

Older, single white males with advanced bladder cancer have the highest suicide risk among those with other cancers of the male genitals and urinary system, researchers report.

Genitourinary cancers - prostate, bladder, kidney, testis, and penile cancer - comprise nearly 25 percent of all new cancers diagnosed in the United States. A new study in the journal Cancer appears to be the first assessment of this group of patients' suicide risks, said Dr. Zachary Klaassen, urology resident at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University and GRHealth.

The review identified suicide in these patients as a public health dilemma that needs physician awareness, particularly in patients who are older, male, and have aggressive disease.

"The older, white, single male is already at higher risk in the general society for suicide; add on the fact that he has advanced bladder cancer, and this is a high-risk patient," said Klaassen, the study's corresponding author. "But this has taught me that we have to look for warning signs in all these patients."

"It's a tough situation. We have to talk more with our patients about how they are feeling even if it's uncomfortable for us," said Dr. Martha K. Terris, Chief of the MCG Section of Urology, Chief of Urology at the Charlie Norwood Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the study's senior author.

The surgeons acknowledge the rigorous road faced by many of these patients and the respect they have for them. Those with bladder cancer, for example, often have surgery to both remove their diseased bladder and divert urine to a collection bag at their side. Recovery from this major procedure takes about three months; interferes initially with bowel function; can result in ongoing problems such as leakage and infection; and patients need long term, close follow up for signs of metastasis, so it's also a very expensive cancer to treat. However, caught early, cure is possible, especially if the disease is not super aggressive. "It absolutely is treatable. You see the patient who comes in 20 years later with no evidence of disease," Klaassen said.

Klaassen, Terris, and their colleagues perused the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program, or SEER, database from 1988-2010 to find 1.2 million people with genitourinary cancer, examining variables such as age, sex, race, as well as disease and treatment aggressiveness.

They found that bladder cancer patients across the board, whether or not they had surgery or advanced disease, had a higher suicide risk than patients with other genitourinary cancers. Older patients with bladder, prostate, and testis cancer were generally at an increased risk. When looking specifically at the black population, those with bladder cancer also had the highest suicide rates; however, those with bladder, prostate, and kidney cancer had much lower suicide rates than whites in the group. Prostate cancer patients had an increased suicide risk over time, with the highest rate 15 years or more after their diagnosis.